Q&A with Jay Baer: Transcript from our Exclusive Webinar

Jay Baer is a marketing consultant,speaker and author of the New York Times bestseller “Youtility”. His recent GetResponse webinar was a big hit! At the end, the audience had great questions. Is organic reach on Facebook still alive? How do you create relevant content? Do companies need to be everywhere in social media? Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy reading his answers to these and many more questions.

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Q: Should your Facebook business page be connected to your personal Facebook page?

Jay Baer:It depends on your business. If your business is essentially you, and you just have a business page because you want to have a business page for your own — yes, I would connect it. But if your business is larger-scale, and other employees will use it, then I would say — no.

I have different Facebook pages. I have a Facebook page for me, Jay Baer, and then I have a Facebook page for Convince and Convert, which is our company. And that’s probably the right way to go.

Q: What’s your advice on old-fashioned companies that don’t want to do “Youtility” marketing, but just want to raise awareness?

JB: Youtility is about relevancy. It’s a marketing playbook, but it’s also very much a corporate culture. You have to believe that eventually you are going to be rewarded for giving people information they would pay for, but are getting free. You have to believe that culturally — in the bones of your organization. Some companies believe that, and some companies simply do not.

Q: Can Youtility create awareness?

JB: Youtility can create a lot of awareness, especially when you transcend a transaction and build things that are not necessarily about your company. You can create a lot of awareness just using those techniques.

Q: What are the two types of relevancy?

JB: The two types of relevancy are: circumstantial relevancy and location relevancy.

Q: Does Youtility work for nonprofit organizations?

JB: Absolutely! In fact, in many cases, it works as well if not better in nonprofit organizations. The key point is, it only works if your nonprofit can get to the point where they can tell a bigger story.

The problem with almost all nonprofit marketing is that it’s exactly the same. They tell what they do and where your money goes, they show a picture of someone they’ve helped… It doesn’t tell a bigger story at all. Therefore, it is not terribly relevant or interesting.

Thus in nonprofits in particular, Youtility can be useful. Create information that is at a higher level, and you could be successful with this kind of program.

Q: There is so much going on in the digital world for solopreneurs. Where do you recommend I start? Should I do a blog, should I do Twitter, etc.?

JB: You’re right, you can’t do it all and certainly not by yourself. There are a lot of ways to answer that question. It depends on what your actual business model is.

I believe that the best place to start is to create content that has a longer shelf life, like a blog, LinkedIn publishing, or Slideshare. These are fantastic media to generate awareness for a solopreneur. And then you can amplify that stuff on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Spend time first creating content that pays an “information annuity”. The problem with Twitter as the only vehicle is that when you send a tweet, it’s gone — it evaporates. I think you should concentrate on content first and then social as frosting on top of that.

Q: Do companies need to be everywhere, like Twitter, Vine, Snapchat?

JB: You probably shouldn’t be everywhere, because you can’t have equal success everywhere. You should be where your customers are. There is no point participating in a social network where your customers are not. If that requires surveying social networks where your customers are, then you should probably do this. That will help you make better decisions.

Q: How do you feel about posting non-useful material on Facebook, just to get interactions?

JB: Well, there are companies that post things like memes that have nothing to do with the company — like putting the cookie recipe, because everyone likes chocolate chip cookies. I’m kind of torn. On one hand, it makes sense, because you’re playing the algorithm game on Facebook. The more somebody likes, comments, and shares your content, the more it will be seen online.

I would say it’s OK to post some off-topic content on social if you’re also doing some content that’s relevant to your business as well. If you’re doing things to get a “like” and after that you follow up with content that actually supports your business — that makes sense. However, if you’re creating content just to get likes on Facebook, and you never talk about your business, you’re not in business. You’re just a magazine, and that doesn’t make sense. I know sometimes people fall into that trap.

I want you to know that the goal is not to be good at social media. The goal is to be good at business because of social media. And those aren’t necessarily the same things. There’s no point getting Facebook likes if that doesn’t support your overall business objectives.

Q: Is organic reach still alive on Facebook?

JB: Organic reach on Facebook can work. The point of Facebook changing their algorithm to diminish organic reach was not to take organic reach away but just to make organic reach much harder to achieve.

You can still do it, but it requires some type of a breakout post, something that transcends a historical basis. The challenge is that those kind of posts (that transcend) are hard to plan. It’s kind of like catching lightning in the bottle.

It’s sort of like viral videos on YouTube. If you create a video and you’re going to put it on YouTube, you have some sense of whether or not it’s going to work. But most of the time, if it takes off, it’s like: Wow, I had no idea it would do that well. Same thing on Facebook. You can have great organic reach. It’s just hard to plan for it. And that’s what makes it a challenging time for Facebook in particular.